Modelling of chloride ingress in concrete based on benchmarking field results

Abstract

Modelling the ingress of chloride ions into the cover of a concrete structure is a phenomenon that is gaining an increasing attention of the research community, but even more, from the engineering practice. As the mechanism that drives the ingress of chlorides is implicitly responsible for the service-life of concrete structures, its input parameters are a major issue whenever predicting the service-life of new concrete structures. In this paper most relevant parameters involved in the evaluation of chloride ingress models are discussed and related to the benchmark activities that currently run in RILEM TC 270-CIM on benchmarking Chloride Ingress Models. The results provide an overview of the models used in the structural design stage, mostly analytical models, and in the rehabilitation stage, mostly numerical models.

Predicting residual service life of concrete infrastructure: a considerably controversial subject

“…In several case studies it has been concluded that the use of a (more) advanced model generally does not necessarily result in a better (or less worse) prediction of chloride ingress in the concrete cover. In [7] a benchmark has been performed based on measured chloride profiles from existing structures, however, the chloride profiles predicted at a later age demonstrate the significant variable outcome between the ingress models used by the respective developers.…”